Did you know that every tiny thing that ever happens in the tech world speaks volumes? Well, it’s true. Take a look.
“Samsung Sticks It to Apple With Swiss Railways Deal” (tip o’ the antlers to TUAW).
Awww, boo-yah! In your face, Apple! Samsung … uh … sold some Galaxy Tabs.
Tell us, Bloomberg’s Mark Milian, what is the news?
Samsung Electronics sent out a press release last week …
You know it’s serious when a company sends out a press release. And we can always believe what Samsung says about its tablet sales, right?
… last week saying its gadgets had been chosen for a technology buildout at Swiss Federal Railways.
You know, it must be hard work sitting around waiting for press releases to roll in and then trying to find a way to make a big deal out of them.
Starting this month, the South Korean giant will begin to supply 30,000 mobile devices to Switzerland’s state-owned rail company.
Ouch. You know that a contract that amounts to a tenth of a percent of the number of iPads Apple sold last quarter has got to sting. It’s also probably a small portion of the number of Galaxy Tabs Samsung sold last quarter. The point is, it’s one contract and isn’t that big a deal.
Or is it?!
These boring corporate one-offs are a common occurrence, and there’s nothing particularly special about this one.
Right?
Or is there?!
Except that less than two years ago, Swiss Railways, which is also known as SBB, publicly accused Apple of copying one of its designs.
Apple did copy one of SBB designs—the clock in iOS 6 (which, by the way, happened under Scott Forstall’s watch) was inspired by SBB’s iconic clock face, and Apple subsequently paid a licensing fee. The design was changed in iOS 7.
Milian tries to tie the timing of Samsung’s deal to the opening of the latest round of patent trials between Apple and Samsung because, LOL, look, Apple copies, too! That’s killer material on the 4th-grade tetherball court, to be sure. Alas, it’s rather far-fetched.
Reto Scharli, a spokesman for SBB, said the railway operator’s decision to team up with Samsung was unrelated to the issue with Apple in 2012. Swiss Railways publicly asked for bidders for the project, and Samsung made the best offer, he said.
Well, yeah. “We made a deal that’s chained us to a vendor because we thought it’d be a good poke in the eye to another company, which paid us handsomely—albeit after the fact—for a clock design that we’ve been milking since World War II” generally doesn’t go over well with your board of directors.
But in Techcoverage-adonia, one plus one equals ZOMG LIKE INFINITY.